Jun 24, 2009 Music Web Exclusive

These days Neil Young has taken to releasing albums whenever and however frequently he chooses. Goodness knows, he's earned the right. In a career that is creeping up on five decades, Young has firmly established himself as the ultimate artist and a cornerstone of rock and roll, perhaps second only to Bob Dylan in terms of artistic integrity, songwriting excellence, and continued musical and cultural relevance. More

Jun 24, 2009 Cinema Web Exclusive

When filmmakers turn to the work of, say, H.G. Wells or Daphne du Maurier as source material, it doesn’t guarantee that their stories will produce exciting, compelling films, but when your inspiration is Hasbro, are you really giving yourself a chance? More

Jun 24, 2009 Video Games Issue #26 Spring 2009 - Bat For Lashes

Until recently, first-person shooter games on the DS have been pretty limited. Metroid Prime Hunters and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent had much better regular console games to live up to, but Moon is an original title that has old-school charm and fun to spare. More

Jun 24, 2009 Music Issue #26 Spring 2009 - Bat For Lashes

As anticipation for Veckatimest built to a fever pitch in early March—Radiohead's ateaseweb.com message board filled with literally thousands of conjectures—Fleet Foxes' frontman Robin Pecknold brazenly declared it to be the best record of the '00s, all this more than a full two months before the record's official release date. Hyperbole cast aside, Veckatimest is certainly Grizzly Bear's magnum opus, a quantum leap over 2006's excellent Yellow House, and a damn strong contender for the best album of 2009 at this early juncture. More

Jun 22, 2009 TV Web Exclusive

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Generation Kill is the fact that David Simon and Ed Burns made this revealing miniseries concurrently with the last season of The Wire, and both are great. Based on Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright’s 2004 book chronicling his time with the Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 7-episode series shows us a side of war that we don’t often see. More

Jun 22, 2009 TV Web Exclusive

HBO’s big, blustery miniseries adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough’s biography of Founding Father John Adams has arrived on Blu-ray. The already impressive miniseries looks incredible in high definition; its stunning production values shining brightly, as do the award-winning performances by Paul Giamatti (as Adams) and Laura Linney as his wife Abigail Adams. More

Jun 22, 2009 TV Web Exclusive

What else can you say about the brilliant last season of one of the most spectacular TV series of all time? Well, if you haven’t yet seen The Shield, it’s all on DVD now, and if you’re a fan of high drama and cop shows, then this show is a must. More

Jun 22, 2009 DVDs Web Exclusive

One of the most acclaimed and innovative documentaries of 2008 is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary about his experiences as an Israeli veteran in the First Lebanon War. More

Jun 22, 2009 DVDs Web Exclusive

Akira Kurosawa is probably the best known and most well loved director from Japan. He worked consistently from 1943’s Sanshiro Sugata to 1965’s Red Beard, making nearly two dozen films in that period; all in black and white and mostly shot in scope. At that point in his career, Kurosawa was ready for a change and decided to come to America and make his first film in color with an American cast. He wrote the script for Runaway Train and began pre-production. The American money men, however, didn’t see eye to eye with his budget predictions, and didn’t understand why the film needed to be in color, so the project was scrapped. (In 1985, a film based on the screenplay was made by Andrei Konchalovsky starring Jon Voight). This brought Kurosawa to another American co-production, also a chance to work with color film.  He was hired to direct the Japanese portions of Tora! Tora! Tora!, a big budget WWII epic from the point of view of American and Japanese soldiers. Kurosawa worked for two years building sets, writing, and shooting sequences before he was fired due to being behind schedule and a feeling from the American producers that he was difficult. 

     All of these circumstances led to Kurosawa’s 1970 film Dodes’ka-den.
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